


That Which Comes From the Chrysalis

by Necronon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal Lecter, Night Terrors, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Sexual Content, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-26 15:38:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16684375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necronon/pseuds/Necronon
Summary: Installment one of my indulgent vampire AU for the MHBB.





	That Which Comes From the Chrysalis

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the 2018 Murder Husbands Big Bang, with art by [istillcantforgetyou](http://istillcantforgetyou.tumblr.com/). Thank you for pinch-hitting and being so patient! Special thanks to my beta, [justlikeyouimagined](https://trikemily.tumblr.com/), for A+ feedback and encouragement. All mistakes are my own.
> 
> Check out the art for this fic [here on tumblr.](http://istillcantforgetyou.tumblr.com/post/180488089542/for-this-years-mhbb-i-worked-with-the-talented)

Will hasn’t exactly been a _good boy_. Clever, or so he’s been told, but not _good._ And his moral compass isn’t the only aspect of his nature that’s had a few adjustments since his bygone days in Wolftrap.

It’s entropy. Not his design, not Hannibal’s. Just sheer fucking incident. Holes manifesting in the floor of the expanding universe that Will falls into. Or karma. Not the omnipotent judgment sort, just action and reaction.

Well. No holes this time. Just a Tree. A real beech ov’a one ( _that’s just for you, Doctor_ ) awaiting him since time immemorial. The only thing ordained by chaos since the first two molecules did the hanky-panky with their electrons. Adam and Atom. _(Okay, you get two, that’s it.)_ Hannibal and Will. Hannibal, ever the catalyst to Will’s unstable element. Id: Wg, HAZARDOUS MATERIAL. And specious Hannibal, a natural gas. Gotta be, when you’re that full of shit.

But it doesn’t start with Hannibal. It starts with the Tree. Before, he still had an out. Before the fucking Tree, he was his own man. He was... well, still a man.

Will considers all this, all the minutiae that has to come together for this one moment to happen. And then, even _then_ , it seems a lot more probable than Hannibal’s _other_ secret. The one buried just under _he’s eating them,_ because most people stop at that. No one, including Will, thinks to ask _Well, what if we’re talking about a very explicit kind of cannibalism, folks?_ Homicide and cannibalism, never mind a laundry list of other transgressions, seems like enough.

With Hannibal’s flair for the dramatic and inability to half-ass anything, even his own provenance, Will shouldn’t be surprised. But he’s getting ahead of himself.

Will doesn’t know, not yet.

The only thing on his mind—except the demons squatting in the periphery of his conscious—is the first relationship he’s had since fate took a dump on his doorstep and christened it Hannibal Lecter. He _should_ know that in all the multiverse there isn’t a parallel reality that exists in which he has anyone in his life that’s not Hannibal. Not peaceably.

But he doesn’t. Not an inkling, even when Hannibal’s existence creeps back into his life in the form of a lone letter in the mail, courtesy of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

It’s 9:00 PM, the night before the Tree happens, and Will is closing in on the bottom of a bottle, dogs scattered and snoozing at his feet. He holds the letter, unopened, in his hands. An anvil drops into the pit of his stomach as he pries the envelope open and reveals its contents.

The luxurious copperplate leaps off the page and Hannibal’s sibilant voice eddies into his conscious, leaving an inexorable chill. Brief but floral. Pretentious. And, because he’s got Molly now and shouldn’t be keeping intimate letters from a psychopath, he burns it.

At least he tries to.

He’s getting up to go to bed, the fire down to embers now, when he sees it: the surviving remains of the letter. A charred little haunt caught against the barb of a wrought iron poker, ferried to safety by a stray breeze from an open window. Immutable to flame. A portent reminder, a promise, that he’ll never extinguish what’s been stoked within.

As if a day goes by where he doesn’t feel the nascent stirring of something Other in the ashes.

As if he still doesn’t want for Hannibal’s company. Want for the old scent again.

The remaining card stock reads: “ _...iss our conversati..._ ” Not only scorched stationary, but cruel circumstance—another hasty tip of the bottle, hand shaking, to his mug: a pick-me-up for an unwelcome forget-me-not.

His eyes burn. Eyelashes, clumped together by moisture, streak his already compromised vision. Will looks at the boxes stowed in the corner of the room, grateful he hasn’t moved out. Not yet.

Molly won’t abide living separately anymore. _We’re engaged, Will. It’s not normal._

He still has the folded receipt from the local grocer—the only thing she’d had in her pocket at the AA meeting—with Molly’s number on the back. It languishes on the small kitchenette table like it has for months, half buried under change and pocket lint. He keeps it for sentimental reasons, like people do, because there are consequences for not conforming. It’s unfair of him to accuse Molly of accusations she hasn’t made, thoughts she hasn’t had for incidental mistakes he hasn’t made. But he does. He’s been through it before, and it’s worse now, because Molly—God, she’s so patient and she tries so hard to understand—she knows. Not everything, but something. She can feel the schism, feels the unwanted presence between them; she knows Will doesn’t burn all the letters he receives from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and those he does burn are done so with halting hands.Burning them is a kind of sacrament to complement the litany in his head. He could just throw them away, but they’re too intimate to condemn to the trash where they might be retrieved. It’s a ritual: the letter, the fire, the whiskey. It scares him, how often he succumbs to whimsy. Hannibal’s copperplate, his thoughts, his smell, Hannibal.

There are fleeting moments he forgets him. It’s what he loves most about Molly, that she’s so present. She lets sleeping dogs lie, and he does the same for her. They’re both rebound relationships that have gone off the rails. A few dates, days, weeks, a few months, a proposal—both so eager to keep distracted and move forward that they don’t stop to ask if they should. It had been okay for a while. There’d been a mutual understanding that they’d eventually go their separate ways, once they had licked their wounds. But somewhere along the way, Molly had fallen in love. She’d said so one evening while they lounged on his ratty sofa, surrounded by snoozing dogs.

He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t been able to even look at her. When he finally had, he’d seen the tight line of her smile, the dull acceptance in her eyes. _Oops,_ her expression seemed to say, taut with sullen resignation.

_Oops._

Is that what he’ll say if she walks in on him one evening, drunk and palming the front of his jeans, an incriminating letter paper-weighted by an empty tumbler beside him? _Oops?_ Maybe _It’s not what it looks like_ , or the tried and true _I can explain_. A lie, because the truth, his truth, is too scathing. For him, for everyone. No amount of self-deprecation and apologizing will make up the difference, because he’s never sorry. It’s the worst part, that he doesn’t entirely regret everything. There’s anger, God knows there is, but not regret. He’s compartmentalized.

What _Molly_ loves most about Will is that he’s good for Wally. Or so she thinks. Will thinks so too, for a while. He tells himself he likes camping, fishing, and even the babysitting. It keeps him (mostly) away from the bottle while he plays at surrogate father.

After Wally had taken an interest in Will’s fly collection, Will had spent that night embellishing stories about them. Mostly about his father and a particularly old fly, the first one he’d ever tied: a woolly bugger with an ugly pinch of marabou and crooked piece of hackle from a quail he’d shot, barb still crusted with blood where he’d pricked his seven-year-old finger. Nothing humanizes someone like childhood reveries and fishing trips with Daddy.

Molly loves nothing more than seeing them together. What she doesn’t see is the side-eye Wally gives him from the safety of the hall when Will is glassy-eyed and slumped in his chair, well on his way down the bottleneck.

Kids are like that, good at sensing when someone isn’t quite right. Disabused by youth.

Will falls asleep thinking he’ll never have kids of his own. That he shouldn’t. He dreams, vivid but intangible. Black, rioting flesh. Tines. The stream runs red.

  
  


* * *

  


**The following morning...**

_It’s 11:00 PM. I’m in Wolftrap, Virginia, and my name is Will Graham,_ he tells himself as he crosses the county line. It never really helps; it’s just an old habit in place of a worse one.

His hand looks weathered as it smooths along the wheel, calluses catching on frayed stitches in the cover. His palms, so often clammy, have sapped the dye out of the stitched leather at the twelve o’clock position where he likes to prop his wrist.

He replays the morning’s lecture in his head and wonders about a student sat at the back, no laptop, no papers. Sitting rigid, blanched, and watching. Balding, middle-aged. _See?_

Will really doesn’t need that shit again. Not now, not that he’s almost _norma_ l. What would Molly think? Not that he’s going to tell her.

He steals a Funyun from the bag shoved into the passenger-side cup holder. He’s on his way home from work, breath an effluvia of chips and the mints in his pocket. Just rank enough no one will smell the whiskey. It isn’t every evening, just most. Doesn’t make him his father because he carries a flask inside his coat.

Or because he carries too many ghosts upstairs.

Hannibal had been the only one able to sift through them, to delineate the infrastructure of Will’s id. Plucking what was left of Will’s soul from a psychological River Styx. If his head is three-star dining for psychopaths, Hannibal is the _maitre d’._ But there’s no accounting for Hannibal’s sadistic curiosity. His ex-psychiatrist had lit a fire under his heels. Watched him burn. Exorcised all the voices but his own. Escorted out all the guests and unfurled into every room of Will’s mind. Will still hears it: hushed words through the ether, sentiments not easily put to paper. Sentiments too large for the paltry dimensions of a single envelope. Sentiments to intimate to be epistolary.

A flash of orange draws Will out of his thoughts.

Up ahead, a row of orange cones and a sign demarcate road work. Will changes lanes as he approaches. A few men stand in the ditch smoking while another drives an asphalt roller, slumped beneath his hardhat and bright safety vest. In the gray twilight, the headlights of Will’s car wink at him from the reflective striping on the vest. The man looks exhausted on his perch, lulled by the dull roar and anesthetizing buzz of the heavy machinery vibration.

Will is startled awake by a violent thump. The man on the asphalt press is nowhere in sight, and the highway has veered off into his periphery: a long, gray tongue cutting through the variegated trees that hem it in.

_Oh._

Gray like the trunk, the thick base of massive beech, racing towards the front of his Volvo. Time slows, just before the impact.

_Oh._

_This is it._

A harsh jerk forward, the yank of the seat belt. The squeal and bark of collapsing metal as the nose of his car warps around the tree.

Orange and yellow leaves saw back and forth in slow motion, settling on the webbed glass of his windshield. The light from the passenger window rimes the outline of a low-hanging branch where it has punched through. It gleams in the rearview mirror, fallen to the floorboard by his feet. He smells the heady odor of rotting vegetation from the cornfield to his left. Green wood from the bough two inches from his temple. The sharp tang of blood.

He can’t feel his arm.

Can’t feel anything at all.

Warm pressure blooms on his shoulder. Will realizes someone is trying to rouse him, and he struggles to break the seal of congealed blood over his eyes. He only manages one, seeing a burnished oval suspended against the sky. He blinks, and the oval becomes a face, black eyes and high cheeks, a straight nose. Deep shadows beneath a pronounced brow that remind Will of a skull. All except for the bowed, red lips. They move, make words. Pursed with disapproval. He knows that expression—has seen it a thousand times after a surly remark or poor punctuality. But _how?_

“H-Hannibal...” His ears ring, but he can make out his own voice, reedy and thin. He tries to take a deep breath to clear his throat, but his chest explodes with pain. Black pinpoints freckle his vision and Hannibal’s face grows vague again. He moans and shudders.

Maybe he’s dead. Or dying. His late father had once told him that God manifests as the familiar—a friend or family member with their hand extended, someone you’ll trust. Or is it the devil?

Will forces one of his reticent hands, the one he can still feel, into the front of Hannibal’s papery shirt—no, hospital gown—and twists. _You won’t get away._ Or maybe: _Please don’t leave._

Hannibal speaks again. He can almost make out the words this time: a distant, dull rasp, like the drag of heavy wool. God, he’s missed that. The pouting mouth and its clandestine micromovements, as if ever conscious of Will’s hypersensitivity. He considers, in his delirium, that Hannibal is kissable—that he’s thought it once before. He’d said as much about Alana once. Before driving to Hannibal’s. Before saying, propped against Hannibal’s island, “Y’know, you are too.”

He’d felt desperation, shame, and longing in that order. Neither extinguishing the other, only mounting until Will locked them away inside another claptrap fort.

_Do you kiss all your psychiatrist friends, Will?_

The pain escalates. A paroxysm of agony. Why does he hurt so much? His head feels too heavy. He isn’t really dying, is he? Not now, not after everything. Before everything. Damn it, he still—

_Hannibal._

_Not. Like. This._

Will exhales softly and, feeling the black of unconsciousness encroaching, says, “I wanted to, y’know. After Alana. Not s-sure what that says about me.” He trusts Hannibal to remember the ordeal. In retrospect it makes a lot more sense, Hannibal’s cold repartee. Hannibal had graduated from “friendly therapist” well before that moment. _Can’t be my paddle and shit creek both,_ but God knew he was well up it.

_You were so jealous._

Will’s mouth feels thick and warm, and he starts to gag. It tastes funny, sharp. He doesn’t have the energy to spit, and something is pressed to his mouth besides. He has to swallow, so he does. Again and again, every ingested ounce quickly replaced by more...

It’s blood. So much blood.

“—here soon. I can’t stay. Ah, not too much.”

Will’s mouth is uncovered. He reflexively licks his lips, the familiar ache of starvation settling low in his gut. He’s never felt so hungry before. Maybe once, when he was ten. No, not even then. Not like _this._

“Can’t,” Will says, reeling. _Leaving me again, when everything hurts. Hurts so much. Wearing death and agony like a mantle. Blood in the wake. Tired. No, I don’t want to sleep yet—“_ Or won’t?” Plaintive, almost angry. “Hannibal.”

Hannibal’s name is the only word left to him. He won’t beg him to stay, not aloud, not even when the hand on his shoulder departs, its lingering warmth quickly stolen by the autumn air. Gone.

Will closes his eye and the world turns over. An immeasurable time later, there are sirens. Too many hands, jostling, too much. There’s nausea and the tang of bile. Then darkness again.

  


* * *

  
  


**The day previous...**

A cart trundles down the empty hall of the maximum security wing of the BSHCI, carrying the last meal of the day. The mental health technician behind it whistles as he plods along, making his way to the cell at the very end. He is tall and sturdy-built with an unexpectedly mild manner and reedy voice. He goes leisurely about his ablutions, but his eyes are sharp by contrast.

This man is the closest thing to a friend that Hannibal has on the inside, and they both know it. Even Alana appreciates the orderly’s meticulousness, and what Hannibal thinks of as an unobtrusive optimism. What she doesn’t know, and what Hannibal does, is that Barney is, like most people, an opportunist when the odds are favorable. Hannibal can make them so.

“Evening’, Doctor Lecter,” The orderly says as he stops the cart, dusts his hands, and peers into the cell.

Hannibal is not in the customary position required of all patients before receiving screened items or meals, and he knows Barney is politely waiting. Hannibal does not move.

“Y’know I can’t give you your food until you’re behind the table.”

Hannibal, lying on his cot, adjusts his head. It’s a chore to work open is rheumy eyes and focus on the man’s blurry silhouette. His throat bobs as he tries to speak, but a cough rattles out instead.

He licks his lip and tries again: “Good evening, Barney.” Another cough threatens. “I’m quite unable to stand.”

“Ya sick? Do I need to call the nurse?” Cautious but genuine concern.

“If you would, please.”

“Okay, Doctor Lecter.”

Unlike Barney, the nurse is thin and coarse, hands set on her hips as she barks orders and questions, hesitant to approach. Hannibal by now can barely make out her shrill voice. A spell of disorientation finds him bouncing down the hall strapped to a gurney, lights in his eyes. He manages to grab hold of a wrist as someone checks his pulse.

They will find him anemic. They will assume the flu, then perhaps SCVID, and then... It will be unwise to stay long after that.

“Whole blood,” he manages before succumbing to unconsciousness. REM sleep takes him outside, to a road. A long highway cutting a swath through a pastoral view of Virginian fields.

  


* * *

  


“Good God,” the attending physician whispers as he finishes examining his patient’s arm and tucks it gently back into place. Before him, Hannibal Lecter lies unresponsive on the bed. “They’re all gone.”

“I don’t know what to say. I was standing right here. I watched it happen.” An NP now, white-faced and wide-eyed. “Eight hundred milliliters of whole blood. Panels normal. We sent blood and tissue samples off to the lab.”

“Was he symptomatic when he was admitted? This can’t be hereditary immunodeficiency.”

“No, his file is a blank slate.” They exchange looks. “The uh… medical one, anyways. Nothing before he was sentenced.”

“Some anemia. How’s his fever?”

“Ran typically hot after the transfusion, but he’s perfectly normal now.”

  


* * *

  


Will wakes to quiet conversation and the incessant squeaking of a loose wheel as a patient walks their IV down the hall. The transition from the wreckage of his car to the inside of a hospital is jarring. The room reeks of economy disinfectant. He recognizes Jack and Alana’s voices and fights to turn his head, but the motion is intercepted by a neck brace.

Alana is stood off to the side with an indecipherable expression, a veneer of perfect calm. She is closed to him so often these days. Clinical. It should hurt more than it does. Either way, he’s grateful he has a buffer against Jack—Alana’s probing is much more tempered, and Jack’s bedside manner leaves something to be desired.

Neither bother with platitudes. Good.

“Took a header. Two fractured ribs, concussion. Your wrist,” Jack says, adding with a gesture of his hand, “your _eye_. Someone called it in.” Will starts to sit up, alarmed, and Jack stops him. “Calm down.” Patriarchal and imperious, but hollow without competence. Not Hannibal. “You’re not blind, just black and blue. Some might call it a miracle.”

Will wets his lips and sucks air into his lungs. He feels a low-grade soreness in his chest, but not enough, not if his ribs were broken. “But not you.” He sounds worse.

“No.” Jack pauses. Then he tells Will how they found him. Where.

He’d run off the road a few miles from his house—had caught the big trunk of the beech tree near the county line. The one frequented by tiny crosses at its base, tawdry assemblages of scrap plywood and cheap embellishments that say more about the people of Wolf Trap than they do the victims. Crooked in their loose soil and casting cruciform shadows parallel to the highway. Newer installments are festooned with garland, synthetic chiffon, that will be spirited away come the next storm.

If he hadn’t left the wreckage, would someone have made him a cross? He tries not to imagine a totem of bodies in its place. A valentine of tangled limbs. No, he doesn’t want a cross. His name has been lauded by enough ugly valentines eulogizing grotesque love pledged through flesh and twisted limbs. A jerrybuilt cross would be underwhelming.

Jack offers a Styrofoam cup with a straw. Will shakes his head, but Jack holds the cup out until Will finally takes it with a grimace. While he drinks, Jack says, “Jim Bean for dinner, huh,” by way of asking if he’s alright and admonishing him in the same breath.

“Looks like it. Guess they ran a tox.”

“They did.”

Will doesn’t want to talk about that. It isn’t any of Jack’s damn business. What he does want to know...

“Where’s Doctor Lecter?”

Jack looks slowly over his shoulder at Alana, but whatever passes between them, Will isn’t privy.

Alana breaks the silence. “Why do you ask that, Will?”

“I—” Why is he asking? He’d had a hallucination, right? If Hannibal has escaped, they’d know. Of course. Exhaustion, the concussion... “Bad dream.”

“Will—”

“They say if I was getting out of here today?”

Alana’s carmine lips contort into a frown. Will is grateful when Jack steps between them and blocks her scrutiny.

“Doctors say you’ll probably be out of here by tonight. Alana or I can drive you home if you—”

“ _No._ ” No, Will doesn’t want that. Not the questions—or the charged silence. “I’ll call someone. Where’s my phone?”

Jack opens a drawer by Will’s bed and hands his phone to him. Will thanks him with a forced smile and opens his phone—an old flip style model with deep gouges in the frame: Buster’s handiwork. Molly always makes fun of it and Will’s unwillingness to upgrade, even though hers isn’t much better.

Will feels his stomach clench when he sees her missed calls. One voicemail. If he calls off their relationship, she isn’t the type to cling. He listens.

“ _Hey, Mr. No-show. The little man isn’t too happy with you right now. I hope everything’s okay. Well, listen, Wally and I—”_

“ _HIIII, WILL!”_

“— _ways, you know where we’re at. At least let me know you’re okay. And don’t think you’re getting off the hook, hot shot. You owe me.”_

“Will,” Jack interrupts, “there’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Can it wait?” Will snaps the phone shut and runs a hand through his hair.

“Afraid not. It’s about the accident. There was a lot of blood, Will. In the car, _and_ on _you_.”

“Yeah, I saw my clothes. Thanks for bringing me”—Will looks at the bag on the floor—“new ones.”

“You can thank Dr. Bloom for that.”

“It wasn’t any—” Alana fishes her ringing phone out of her purse and grimaces at the screen. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”

They watch her go and when the doors clicks shut behind her Jack continues. “I don’t think you understand. We were expecting a body, Will, but you came in with a few fractures and a concussion. Abrasions too, but they’re... gone now.”

Will swallows, or tries to.

“You see what I’m getting at?”

“Yeah, I see. You think this is like...” Will swallows, the name sticking in his throat. His voice breaks on the last syllable. “Abigail.”

“Seems to be a trend going on. Victims with too much blood, or none at all.”

“Avant garde erythrocytosis.”

“What was that?”

“Never mind.”

“You know, it’s funny you should ask about Lecter. Just this morning he asked about _you_. Hours after the crash, almost before I knew.”

Will looks over his blanketed feet at the wall. “The staff probably saw it on the TV. And Doctor Lecter is _very good_ at convincing people it’s in their best interest to keep him informed.”

“Alana seems to think otherwise.”

“And what does Alana think?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

“Did she ask about unusual wound patterns? Bite marks?” Will’s voice is tight.

Jack doesn’t answer.

“Thought so.” A single dry laugh before he closes his eyes. Braces. “Find anything?” The question sounds more plaintive than he intends. Too uncertain. Will glances at Jack in time to see his frown lines deepen.

“No.”

Will sighs, not wholly relieved.

  


* * *

 

Will’s at the local liquor store a few weeks after his collision. The owner knows his face, that it’s usually marred by razor knicks and not ugly lesions. There aren’t a lot, not yet, but everyone he meets gawks at them when he forgets his hat.

Bill does the same, lofting a hairy brow as Will pushes a bottle of J&B across the counter, plucked last minute from the bargain kart by checkout. Will’s covered in a cold sweat and looks like hell warmed over, but Bill’s too polite to ask directly, his southern accent and propriety a force of habit. Will’s all too familiar. Will can, however, read the tension in Bill’s face from forcing his eyes anywhere but the prominent contusions—overnight additions to his persistent lesion—on Will’s forearms.

“Doin’ alright, then?” Curiosity poorly hidden behind a note of concern.

Will’s tired of being a curiosity, for the serially bored and homicidal alike. He nods and points offhandedly at his head. “Attic ladder. Lesson learned.” He doesn’t know why he lies, but he does it readily. Easily.

Bill chuckles and slides the receipt and a pen over to Will. “Chevy Chase would be proud.”

The inanity of Bill’s remark annoys him, but he forces a smile and signs the receipt. It’s the start of the weekend and he’s got a promising night of heavy drinking ahead of him. He’ll wash the sour taste of small talk out of his mouth soon enough.

Lately his tolerance for everything but alcohol is abysmal. He lives in a world of too much and not enough. No equilibrium unless he’s off his face. Probably not even then. He just stops caring.

That night, he tries to drink himself unconscious, but he doesn’t get much sleep.

Will’s dreams are awash with red. He lies prone at high tide, icy water lapping at his flank and engulfing his legs, his heart beating at the hot core of him, tributaries of fire racing to and from his chest. A writhing mass with eight limbs and two heads, hurting and hungry.

Then he is on his back, the tide at his throat. His hands find purchase in dense muscle and bladed shoulders, in soft hair and hard—

Teeth.

He screams, roars, claws and bends and hurts. Until he doesn’t. He pants, panics, worried as his breath shortens and the tide rises. But he cannot push the thing atop him away. When he reaches he is not sure it is to push. Not away, but against. Pulling. Yes.

Will snaps awake with a choked gasp, fingers hooked in the damp sheet beneath him. The corners have come loose from the mattress, which he half lies upon. The front of his boxer shorts bulges with a meager erection he is unable to sustain because of disorientation.

Must be coming down with something. He doesn’t remember Walter or Molly feeling sick.

But it doesn’t get better. It’s a gradual decline, and he lives like this, in an invalid catatonia with his new wife and son.

Until Jack calls and the Dragon comes.

  


* * *

  


There’s a pallor to Hannibal that can’t be attributed to his time indoors. His eyes are dull, lips ashen, cheeks gaunt. He’s thinned by consumption, and Will feels a molten spike of anger in his chest towards Alana. Hannibal’s voice is thick when he speaks, throat raw, and dark rashes peek out above the collar of his prison jumper.

 _Just like me_ , Will thinks. Will doesn’t look as bad off yet, but the similarities are unmistakable.

Whatever is wrong with Hannibal is wrong with Will too.

They don’t speak, air so heavy between them that Will is afraid he’ll choke if he tries. When they finally arrive, Will is grateful to exchange the stifling interior of the patrol car for the coast’s briny air. The wind is crisp and cuts through his clothes, immediately rousing him from the dissociative stupor he’d fallen into during the ride.

Will comes up beside Hannibal and listens with abject whimsy as he remarks upon the ocean without remarking upon it at all. Will understands now. Finally. At least he feels the impending understanding, the soles of his feet against the tooth of the cliff. He’s come here to answer a question, about himself and about Hannibal.

The cliff house is cold. Colder, as the light fades.

Hannibal changes while Will clears his head. He’s unsure how long he’s been staring out over the ocean when he turns and sees the bottle of wine Hannibal carries in the crook of his fingers, two accompanying glasses in tow. The same bottle Will brought to dinner, after the ambulance, when he’d had the ridiculous notion they were to share the evening privately. Not a date, not exactly.

And not so unthinkable now, not after the dinners that had followed, but the jitters and subsequent disappointment he’d felt that night still warm his face with a kind of schoolboy embarrassment. Then and now, as he sees the familiar bottle, test clenching up tight. He presses his lips tightly together so they do not quiver. Maybe Hannibal can still tell, because there’s indecision in his posture. Will can feel it, see it in the pale hand and fingers that contemplate the corkscrew.

Then Hannibal twists the corkscrew into cork instead of flesh, and it is over.

Conversations about love disguised as compassion, something mundane and more palatable. The inconvenience. Encroaching lassitude bred from nostalgia, being together again, then—

The bottle shatters and Hannibal’s lip curls, disgusted not with the fresh wound in his abdomen but the spoiled wine. Will cannot tell the fluids apart as they arch and splatter. The wine was to be a rite. It is sentimental, and the waste will not be forgiven.

Shards of glass sing against the tile.

Hannibal collapses.

The Dragon is here.

Will licks his lips and shudders. His hand lingers at his side, grazing the holstered pistol on his hip. He watches Hannibal watch him, the liminal space before the moment of truth. That syrupy drag of time before the muzzle flash, before—

He’s too slow.

The Dragon buries the knife in him instead, through the tender flesh of his cheek between his teeth. He feels the grate of the metal up into his gums and behind his eyes. The notched blade shreds a second smile into his face.

 _We might actually die here_ , Will thinks. They’re both grievously injured.

Will throws himself into the fight, but even if they take down Dolarhyde, there’s Jack and the FBI to worry about. That’s if they don’t bleed out first.

Will’s resigning himself to these facts when he sees Hannibal leap onto Dolarhyde and tear into his neck. Not with a knife, but his teeth. There’s no fount of blood this time, because Hannibal is drinking it. His throat bobs with a kind of animal enthusiasm as Dolarhyde’s hands claw ineffectually at his face.

He must be hallucinating again. Cannibalism, okay. Fine. But this?

When the Dragon is motionless and exsanguinated on the floor, Hannibal shirks his top and pries two fingers into his weeping gunshot wound. The oozing pucker is already smaller. Healing? Will gawks at it as Hannibal approaches hastily and takes Will’s hand, pulling him to his feet. It hurts, but he manages.

Hannibal’s heart beats with renewed vigor under Will’s palm. Mesmerizing. Hannibal holds Will’s head in his hands and looks at him for an eternity, smoothing away bloodied clumps of hair from his forehead.

“I have you,” Hannibal says, tucking Will’s face into the crook of his neck. Something wet and warm blooms against his mouth. Will doesn’t remember Hannibal being injured here. It smells... He...

Hannibal sighs and fortifies their grotesque embrace. “That’s it, Will. Your body knows.”

Will drinks. And drinks more. What he’s doing is disgusting, he knows, but he can’t stop. With every swallow, he feels warmer and more alive than he has in years. Feels right. He gnashes, sucks. Realizes he’s the one making the subhuman rumbling.

  


* * *

 

**Somewhere in the Atlantic...**

Hannibal is fearsome to behold after the fall of the Dragon, skin flushed and eyes blazing. Will wonders how he didn’t see it before. That something was different. About Hannibal and, now, about Will too.

 _I want to watch him change you,_ he’d said. Saying, in so few words, _Like you changed me. You didn’t ask my permission, and I’m not asking yours._

He hadn’t been sure if Hannibal would survive. He hadn’t known the extent of things. Hannibal’s gift has an addendum full of fine print Will isn’t privy to. Could he even die at all?

From where Will’s standing it doesn’t look like it.

Hannibal loiters by the helm, an arm draped over the fiberglass wheel. Will’s the more experienced sailor, but no one would know it by looking. After a few days of guided sailing, Hannibal took to the catamaran like—well, he doesn’t want to say a fish to water. It annoys Will. Not because Hannibal’s resourcefulness borders on insufferable, but because Will finds a little relief in it now, in knowing that there is a plan and a destination, albeit one Hannibal has yet to discuss with him. He’s grateful to have a second pair of hands on deck. He’s not eager to repeat his first solo journey to Europe. Not to mention Will is bedridden most of the time. There’s ocean as far as the eye can see on all sides, and Will can barely keep his eyes open, let alone navigate.

How long has it been? At least a week. Maybe two now.

But there’s another problem. All the food stores aboard? The fishing gear? Useless. Because he can’t eat that. Or, more accurately, he can’t eat only that. But despite the nausea, despite the contusions, despite the unbearable spasms in his gut, he won’t do it.

Hannibal’s eyes trail after him as Will hobbles from the bathroom and collapses back on the cot. The cat is spacious for a single-man sailboat, and now he can finally appreciate the luxury. Well, almost.

_You drink or you die._

One of the few times Hannibal has been frank. No time for prose when your object of obsession is wasting. Will considers the latter option just to spite Hannibal, but his survival instincts are kicking in. The fear of the unknown, of death, of the afterlife or absence of it. He can feel death on him with agonizing intimacy. His senses are heightened now, and that means every ache, every bout of nausea is tenfold. No dissociating for you, Mr. Graham.

Hannibal approaches and ducks his head into the small cubby that encompasses the cot and a single set of drawers that fasten closed. “How are you feeling?”

“You know how I’m feeling.” Will shoves at the blankets, intermittently hot and cold. “Shouldn’t you be up top?”

“The water is mild today. I thought we might have lunch.”

“I don’t want anything. It just makes it worse.”

“A _proper_ lunch.”

Will’s eyes shift from Hannibal to a spool of rope in the cabin’s corner.

Hannibal makes a vague sound of dismissal and strides past Will and out of sight. Will thinks the matter is settled until he smells it: not coppery, not anymore, but savory and cloying. His gut jerks so fiercely that he arches up off the cot and clenches the sheets until his knuckles bulge white through the papery skin of his hands.

It passes eventually. The pain, but not the smell. He’s dying, he knows, and when he can finally open his rheumy eyes, Hannibal hovers above him wearing an inscrutable expression. Hannibal’s presence crowds Will’s distress against the back of his throat, and WIll sucks in a sharp breath around it. He doesn’t have to look to know that Hannibal cradles his slit wrist over a small bowl. He can barely think with it so near—tidy and precise, but effectively appetizing.

Hannibal quirks his head a few degrees and squints his eyes, a grand gesture that warns Will of the good doctor’s thinning patience. Will almost laughs, but his mouth and throat are parched.

“Your resolve won’t hold. You won’t be able to help it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’ve had me once. And you will again.”

Will rolls away from him, but Hannibal presses closer. The small space is suffocating. His throat feels tight, and he has to force the words out. “I didn’t _want_ this.”

“I saved your life.” A pause. “I care about you, Will.”

Oh, that’s rich. Hannibal can go fuck himself. “You didn’t _save_ it. You hijacked it. I’m not sure that qualifies as altruism.”

“Looking closer at motive teaches us that altruism is an ideal.” Hannibal brushes a stray curl away from his eyes, a motion that feels distinctly deprecating. “If you have changed your mind,” Hannibal says, tucking the curl behind his ear, “I can kill you. Give you to the sea you so love and fear. Do you want to die, Will?”

 _Yes_ he wants to say, because he knows it’s the only way to wound Hannibal. Or maybe the blow would be glancing—maybe Hannibal’s just playing another one of his games, assuaging his curiosity. The thought of Hannibal shrugging off all Will’s pain, and even his death, infuriates him. He can’t tell if Hannibal is still looking, waiting, but he doesn’t turn to see.

“No,” Will finally says, unable to muster pretense. Hannibal can probably tell when he’s lying, if he couldn’t before. See it, smell it, _feel it._ Even now Will likewise feels Hannibal inside, an errant suggestion of the man beside him in Will’s head and heart. “And don’t act like you’d let Davy Jones have me before you took a piece.”

Hannibal acquiesces with a soft hum then pulls Will’s injured shoulder so that he’s forced onto his back. Even if he wasn’t injured, Hannibal is strong. Far stronger than Will can begin to comprehend. He doesn’t fight it. Can’t.

Hannibal’s wrist is already healing. The steady flow of blood has narrowed into a thin ribbon, almost completely clotted. The bowl is brimming with blood. Not the first time Hannibal’s done this. How many have come before Will?

“I am sorry, Will.”

“No, you’re not.” Will frowns, taken-aback by sincerity of Hannibal’s concession. He peers at him, searching for some deceit, but only finds the soft lines of a tired man. And some A-list acting.

In lieu of a reply, Hannibal reaches for Will’s face and cups his cheek, thumb roaming over his chapped lips. Overstimulated, Will squeezes his eyes shut against the sensation, not realizing the thumb glazed with blood before it forces past his lips and over his tongue.

A jolt of electricity completes a circuit around his nervous system before fizzling out in his gut. Will’s eyes snap open and his body surges again. He’s starving. To death. He’s—

The cramps, the vice in his gut. Vertigo.

It’s only a whisper, the softest _please_ , but it’s past his lips before he can help himself. He knows he’s said it aloud by the way Hannibal’s posture softens.

Hannibal reaches slowly for him, broadcasting his approach, and threads gentle fingers through his curls. He pulls and smooths them back affectionately. The raw adoration in his face makes Will feel warm. He swallows and draw a shaky breath. Hannibal’s quiet gaze and tactile hands have always been bewitching, but of late they’re particularly sedating. It makes him uncomfortable, this inexplicable power Hannibal has over him. Is it the infection? Or has it always been there?

Hannibal’s beside manner, despite the fact he is tipping a bowl of blood to Will’s lips, is impeccable. A supportive hand on his back helps him sit upright as he takes the liquid into his mouth, down his throat. Still warm. A thick soup of youth and vigor. It works fast. He feels the pins and needles almost immediately, a prelude to the blast of endorphins that blankets all the pain. He manages a partial erection that he’s too waylaid by relief to be ashamed of. The shame will inevitably come, as it did shortly after the cliff. As it always does. But not yet.

So when Hannibal angles his head, Will misinterprets and mashes his mouth to Hannibal’s—an aggressive kiss that abruptly ends when Hannibal pursues it, Will knocks his head against the wall, and slumps. Still too weak and too inebriated.

Hannibal helps him lie back down and breathes something into Will’s ear that he forgets almost immediately. He catches Hannibal’s shirt sleeve before he gets out of reach, but Hannibal pulls free and is gone, leaving Will to ride out his high.

A few hours later, Will is reinvigorated. And lamenting the onset of any convenient amnesia, because kissing Hannibal, even in a fit, is not something he wants to unpack. Not in the small space they share on the catamaran, or ever.

When he begrudgingly climbs the short flight of stairs to go up top, its to find the brilliant blue heavens above a vast cut of glittering ocean; Hannibal lies on the deck, resplendent and dark against the white fiberglass by a tray of caviar and water crackers. Singularly indulgent.

Will shoves his hands into his pockets and steps closer, but even barefoot, Hannibal still turns his head and cracks an eye open at him, iris a bright honey-brown in the noon sun. Will can’t resist joining him, sitting with his legs folded and quietly soaking up the midday warmth and balmy air, leaning with the gentle rocking of the boat and watching the flat horizon.

“Nice stemware.” Will glances over his shoulder at Hannibal, who’s cradling a cheap plastic cup of white wine in his hand.

“A small compromise for the view.”

“We’re not exactly on vacation.”

“Would it be inappropriate if we treated it as such?” Hannibal looks at him, the hint of smile tugging at his mouth.

“Are you... tan?”

“Am I?”

Will rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “It’s just...”

“Would you prefer me ghoulishly white and wearing a black cape?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one concerned with pageantry.”

Hannibal sits up. Will feels the weight of his examination. Then: “You have questions. And I will gladly answer them. In time. For now, you must trust me.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, perhaps not.”

Hannibal reclines again and closes his eyes. Will continues to look out over the ocean.

They won’t be long now. A week if the sailing is good. Two weeks if they hit rough water. Will wonders who awaits them on the other side. He wonders how long it can go on, their fever dream.

 

* * *

 

Hannibal has people. Of course he does. Discrete, wealthy, or skilled. A cocktail of all three. Oligarchs and sharks and artisans. Useful debtors. The first familiar face he sees is Chiyoh, but she barely acknowledges him. Their history is not friendly, but neither is it dishonest. Will can’t find it in himself to be angry with her. They’re both pawns in Hannibal’s game, even if what binds them to the board is wholly different. She meets them near the border of Lithuania. They have identification, elaborate aliases well prepared before the Dragon, but Hannibal is being careful.

Will knows they’ve arrived when Hannibal’s tension seeps into him, permeating like the wet cold outside. Rolling fields give way to a familiar forest blanketed in low-hanging fog, witchy quiet, and autumn oranges. A man around Hannibal’s age is there to greet them, dressed in a dour suit and sparing Will a sharp glare as he opens the gates for the car.

There is a brief conversation in a language Will doesn’t recognize, some fielding of luggage, and then Chiyoh and the mysterious man retreat to the house. Will approaches the front doors, lingering on the stoop. Fingers light over tarnished silver, he touches one of the heavy knockers: a meticulously carved snake coiled about a bar.

He’s had a lot of time to think during the ride through the countryside. Too much time.

“You could have saved her,” he says, Abigail’s name unspoken between them. Will turns slowly to face him, not looking up until he speaks again. Bitterness seeps into the timbre of his voice. “Bella. You could have saved her too. I wonder what Jack will think when he finds out you’re a walking cure for cancer. Right under his nose.”

“I imagine he would be outraged. Perhaps no more than he already is. But he won’t find out.”

“You’re assuming I won’t tell him. I won’t turn you in.”

“I’m assuming your plans for me are more permanent than confinement or death. You have tried both, and you’re well aware I cannot be involuntarily confined.”

“Not to a cell,” Will amends. “Not in a room.”

“At least not of the brick and mortar variety.”

“Why did you do it? Turn yourself in?”

Hannibal considers his answer. He lets out a quiet breath and finally says, “The same reason a butcher hangs a primal cut to molder. I had to let you desiccate, Will. Let you break out of the rigormortis of doubt.”

“Doubt?”

“Self doubt. Among others. Tell me, when did you know?”

“Know what?”

“I thought we were being honest with one another, Will.”

Will averts his eyes, but Hannibal reads the way his shoulders defensively draw in, rumpling the shirt across his chest. “I’m sure you can guess. It was all by your design.”

“All? Not all, no.” Hannibal’s hand on his shoulder is feather light, as if asking permission to be there. “But I would like to hear you say it all the same.”

Will jerks and glares, unable to help an ironic laugh. “Sadist.”

“I prefer _inquisitive._ ” Hannibal looks up and down Will’s body, considering the great many scars there, immortalized in flesh. Cast in amber the moment the lamb became the lion, forever. He does so slowly and obviously, until Will’s ears redden. “It is no wonder I complement you so.”

“I’m not—” Will’s eyes widen. Hannibal sees the exact moment his humiliation transforms into understanding.

“Your ready-made wife and child couldn’t possibly have known. Seen. Even Jack, firm of hand, wasn’t enough. Not competent. All of them paddles yanked from you by whiter water.”

Will rounds on Hannibal. Gets in his face. “Don’t—” He has to steady his voice. Clench his fist so it doesn’t do more than tremor at his side. “Don’t talk about them like that. Like they’re—”

“Things?”

“It’s not their fault that I’m—”

“The way you are.”

Will holds his breath. Lets it out. Relents when a warm hand cups his cheek. Hannibal’s hands, capable of affection and cruelty in equal measure. Will’s not sure he knows the difference. If he cares. He wants them both.

“There is nothing wrong with you. Your relationship with pain is...” Hannibal’s thumb swabs up and down his shoulder as he considers. “Beautiful. Company that cannot see as much is wasted on you.”

“Like you,” Will says, not missing a beat. Hannibal purses his lips fractionally and swipes his thumb along his cheek, slowly augmenting their intimacy.

Will doesn’t mean to press into the touch, but he can’t help it.

“I’ve given you more already. If you want my hands, you have only to ask.”

“I’m here aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Hannibal agrees, “bodyand soul.”

“Sans my mortal coil.”

“Not absent, simply fortified. You are perfectly capable of true death.”

“As I’m sure you’ll frequently remind me.”

“Of course.” Hannibal smiles, a rare show of teeth. Deceptively human teeth. “Death becomes you.”

They stand together in silence a while, gossamer fingers and unsteady breath. Will lets his forehead against Hannibal’s chest, and it’s only natural when Hannibal sets his chin atop his head, enfolding him in his arms. Will hates that it makes him feel safe. He knows how absurd it is. That for all his blustering, he likes belonging. At the end of the world, he’ll always have a home in Hannibal.

But it’s more than that.

“Sex wasn’t the issue,” Will says into Hannibal’s coat. Hannibal’s composure avails him. Will shouldn’t be surprised. Isn’t. Disappointed, maybe. “Not being there physically—there’s a script for that—it was...the soul part I guess.”

“You were just going through the motions. Acting the part of a good husband.”

“Right. She said it felt like we were in a long distance relationship. She saw it, I guess, before I slipped into the role. Would ask, _one foot or an ocean_? Between us, I mean. Not really expecting an answer I guess. She knew. Funny thing about lies—easier to tell but harder to sell as they age.”

“You were on the other side of the veil. Nothing to quicken the heart.”

“Not always. Sometimes it was good. But I think she realized I was putting my imagination to use.”

“What did you imagine, Will?”

Will turns his face into Hannibal’s chest and shudders. His fingers curl into the smooth paisley, wrinkling it. Hannibal lets him. _Did you always smell this good?_ “This. Your scent. Your goddamn three-piece su-suits,” he finishes with a sob, because the reality and relief of finding Hannibal, whole and alive, is finally hitting him, and fuck Hannibal for that.

Hannibal’s chest deflates beneath him. Lips brush through his hair and arms wind about him. Will half expects a linoleum knife to come gnashing—not quite surgical in the wake of betrayal, but precise all the same. That icy pain bleeding into deep, red-hot hurt. Hands hot with blood, heart hot with...

Not love. Couldn’t be that.

 

* * *

 

“A third of the estate is still dilapidated, but you had the kitchen furnished and renovated?”

“Nothing wrong with having priorities, Will.”

“Right.”

They fall into silence except for the clack of a wooden ladle and low hiss of the gas range. Will finishes half his Merlot before he works up the nerve.

“Can you do it? Without killing me.” Realizing his fingers are suggestively fondling the stem of his glass, he forces the offending hand into his pocket. “Do you want to?”

Hannibal cuts a quick look over his tidy shoulder, tasting spoon in hand and apron tied about his waist. He doesn’t bother playing entirely coy.

“I have thought of it.”

“Why haven’t you? You could have.”

“I could.” Hannibal returns the lid to the pot and, after blowing it cool, offers Will the spoon.

Will takes the spoon into his mouth, keeping his eyes on Hannibal. Watching Hannibal watch him. “It’s good.” Of course. “You were waiting for me to want you to.”

“It came to my attention that what I enjoy most about you is you. And your agency to be you.”

“No fun when I’m drugged and drooling on your upholstery, huh.”

Shadows blot beneath Hannibal’s eyes as he inclines his head, looking at Will with open chastisement. Almost enough to be comedic, but not quite.

“But you still eat.”

“Apparently.”

“Do you have to?”

“Not since I was a young man.”

“Why?”

“My body finished growing.”

“But you’re still aging.”

Hannibal sighs, returns the spoon to the counter, and turns to offer Will his whole attention. “Inevitably, but only to a point. I have plateaued.”

“Sure, but...”

Hannibal makes a sound that’s as close to a grumble as he gets. “I think you might find the idea more comprehensible if you redirect your line of thinking away from movie tropes, and consider that it is biological. A disease. An adaptation to immunodeficiency. Albeit one with a considerable addendum.”

“Nature kind of overshot it.”

“It is not without its drawbacks, I assure you.”

“Like blood. Will you die if you don’t drink it?”

“Eventually, yes.”

“But you won’t live forever if you do?”

“Long enough.”

Will smirks. “You don’t know, do you?”

“No one does. Suicide is rampant among the oldest.”

“Can you turn me into...” Hannibal shoots him a sharp look before Will can say _vampire_ , so instead he says, “like you?”

“No, not exactly. It is hereditary. Recessive. Your life is wholly dependent on access to my blood. Without it, your viral load will diminish. Without me, your body will gradually begin to destroy itself.”

“Guess I can’t really be mad about it. I’d be dead otherwise.”

“Yes, you would be.”

“Wasn’t enough, taking my autonomy. Had to have the rest. Had to have your cake and eat it.”

“Scorn is unbecoming, Will.”

“I think I’m allowed a little.” Now that Will’s finally getting some answers, he can’t stop himself. Before he thinks better of it, he asks: “You slept with Alana. So... you can have sex? She’s not... infected?”

“I’m old, not primitive. I use protection. If I’ve had a hardy meal, I’m capable of a myriad of carnal intimacies.”

Will feels his face flush. “I’m assuming by ‘meal’ you don’t mean _foie gras._ ”

“I do not.” Hannibal cants his head and studies Will, eyes thinning in concentration. “Direct feeding can be extremely arousing. A close second to the ortolon. Everyone is unique, however.”

“Direct... feeding. Directly from the source?”

“Correct. Unfortunately, spoiled meat renders the experience equally unpleasant. I almost never feed as such.” Hannibal purses his lips. “Like your empathy. It is intimate and intense across the spectrum.”

“It’s... It’s okay if you want to. From me, I mean.”

“Circular feeding.” Hannibal takes a measured step closer, dark eyes darting about his face. He presses a hand over Will’s heart, and Will lets his eyes flutter closed. “I drink from you, then you feed from me. The most effective measure for maintaining thralls.”

“Excuse me. Thralls?”

“Infected, but unable to replicate the virus. Dependent upon their maker, and genetically bonded to them. Psychokinesis and psychic bonds might still fall under parapsychology, but the absence of understanding doesn’t preclude the phenomena. Part of you belongs to me now. Your body will attack that part, without the virus to repair it.” Hannibal looks reverently down at him and presses the pad of his thumb over Will’s pulse where it jumps, quicker now, in his throat. “It will hurt. Blood loss can be a very unpleasant, disorienting experience.”

“If there’s one thing with which I’m intimately acquainted”—he carefully shapes each word, allows himself a modicum of anger as the memory bubbles up—“it’s the unpleasant effects of blood loss.”

Will’s pleased when Hannibal briefly adverts his eyes and softly sighs.

“Groomed as a thrall, your body would recover. It is taxing. In a pleasurable way. Clears the head. A process I started with you, admittedly, a bit prematurely. You left quite the impression on me that morning in Jack’s office. The barely concealed discord of your mind.” Hannibal closes his eyes, taken by nostalgia. “Heart thrashing. The perfume of cortisol. An acquired scent. I wanted to open you up immediately. I knew your taste, and your subsequent death, would be exquisite. Taking on a thrall was realized lately.”

“Doomed from the start,” Will says wistfully. “And you?”

“Stimulated until the blood fever wears off.”

“Stimulated.” Will laughs and takes a fortifying breath. “Enough to...”

“More than enough. Unfortunately, with your blood loss, you won’t be up for participation unless we enjoy dinner beforehand. There will be enough between us then.”

“Oh...”

 

* * *

  


**A memory returns to Will as he rouses...**

The soft scrape of graphite over vellum lulls Will into a state of ease he is not accustomed. The hearth pushes the wet cold of Maryland’s winter to the farthest corners of the room. A single glass of wine: deep red, purportedly Lithuanian, and always on the menu. Will can’t read the label, but he’s acquired a taste for it despite his preference for bottom-shelf whiskey. It has an unusually coppery bouquet. Tannins, Hannibal tells him. The buzz is different too. Elevating but sharp. Time slows and colors deepen. He’s imagining it, of course, but it’s nice. No wonder schmoozers love their wine.

Pleasantly sedate, Will cants his head and stares curiously at his companion. “How do you do that?”

Hannibal looks up. “Sketch?”

“No.” Will swirls his glass as he chooses his words. There are so many now. “What to say. Well, _when_ to say. It’s just that I’ve had therapists—uh, friends, before. And I usually dread this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing is that, Will?” Hannibal sets his pencil down beside his drawing and laces his fingers, hands on his desk and listening intently.

“Talking. Small talk, specifically. That nagging obligation to remedy the silence that makes other people uncomfortable. It’s different with you. Talking.”

“And not talking.”

“Yeah. I... like it. I like...” Will sighs, frustrated, and motions loosely to the air around them. Hannibal smiles covertly, seeming to understand.

“Better companionable silence than stilted pleasantries. It is good to have a place to be free of social constructs, conversational and otherwise.”

“But you’re still pleasant.”

“Certainly not out of expectancy or obligation. Rest assured that my deference to you is friendly.” Hannibal’s gaze drifts and his lips turn down. “Though ‘friendly’ is a bit tepid in the American vernacular.”

Will laughs. “I’ve noticed you’re careful to distinguish between acquaintances and friends, doctor.” Will’s voice softens as he adds, “I’m...pleased to be the latter.”

“Pleased,” Hannibal echos thoughtfully. He peers at Will a long moment, rolling the pencil slowly beneath his fingers. The edges knock quietly against the lacquered surface of the desk. “Another tepid word.” His hand stills. “From anyone else. Thank you.” Will knows he means it.

Will averts his eyes as Hannibal retrieves his pencil and starts to sketch again. So polite. Will, annoyed with himself for balking, pushes out of his chair and strolls over, leaning against Hannibal’s desk. Hannibal continues uninterrupted, using a ruler to pull clean lines across delicate vellum.

“What building is that?”

“I hope,” Hannibal says, with a cautious stroke, “it will be the renovated east wing of my estate.”

“Your estate?”

“Inherited property overseas. Dilapidated but viable foundations. I hope to restore it one day soon.”

“I can’t image owning a place big enough to have wings. I think of castles.”

“It is,” Hannibal adds casually.

“Is what?”

“A castle. Or was.”

Will raises both his brows. “Castle Lecter... Of course there’s a Castle Lecter. As long as I don’t have to call you _My Lord._ ”

“If you did, you would not be wrong.” Will gapes and Hannibal’s eyes crinkle with the beginnings of another smile. “I assure you it is not as fanciful as it sounds. The remains of the castle and its acreage are in poor condition and will cost more than their worth to repair, and my title is a formality. Ephemera from bygone days.”

“As you say, My Lord.”

Hannibal clucks his tongue at him and sets to work on the beginning of an elaborate colonnade.

  


* * *

  


Will turns to face the warm body beside him. Hannibal is, for the first time, second to wake. He is sprawled and disheveled, still naked from their love-making. Warm from feeding. But their bond doesn’t allow him to remain asleep long. Will watches him slide into consciousness and open his eyes. His voice rumbles in his chest, still hoarse from sleep.

“What is wrong?”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“Hm?”

“The wreck. When I hit that tree. I felt... you were there. In my head.”

Hannibal sits up with uncharacteristic lethargy and pins Will with clouded eyes. Once upon a time, he might have been able to conceal his apprehension, but Will knows. He feels it.

“There is something I should tell you, Will.” Hannibal’s expression sobers quickly. “There are things you should know. It’s time.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Drop by my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thenecronon) and say hi!


End file.
